Auckland's danger road revealed

DANGER ZONE: A stretch of Auckland motorway clocked up the highest number of serious injury crashes.

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Auckland is home to one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country.

A Transport Agency report assessing the danger of New Zealand's state highways showed a stretch in Takanini clocked up the highest number of serious injury crashes between 2007 and 2011, at 46.

Eight people died in crashes there during that period.

Further south, State Highway 22 from Drury to Pukekohe is another dangerous area marked as having "high collective risk".

Five deaths and seven serious crashes happened there during the four-year period.

The Warkworth to Wellsford journey along SH1 was also deemed high-risk, with 17 serious injury crashes and nine fatal accidents.

In the Waikato, several stretches of motorway were marked high risk.

There were 11 fatal crashes on SH1 from Huntly to Hamilton and 30 serious injury crashes. On SH3, between Te Kuiti and New Plymouth, there were 15 fatal crashes.

Taranaki, Manawatu and Wellington's most fatal road was SH3 and SH1 from Whanganui to Palmerston North where 11 deaths occurred.

The Canterbury and Otago regions had no high collective risk roads, according to the report.

Nationally there has been a 15 per cent reduction in fatal and serious crashes on New Zealand's state highways for the 2007 to 2011 period compared with 2002 to 2006, the report found.

Though the proportion of motorway classified as being high-risk dropped from seven per cent to four, the proportion of low-risk road increased from 29 per cent to 41.

"The data has helped us to identify high-risk roads and target our safety improvements where they will save the most lives and prevent the most serious injuries," said Ernst Zollner, NZTA's general manager of strategy and performance.

The report looks at the safety of nearly 11,000km of motorway across the country.